Open Office Hours about Parent Page field – Jan. 12, 2022

Recap of meeting focused on the new Parent page field in the CMS.

Mass Digital held Open Office Hours for Mass.gov authors and editors on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022, on Zoom.

The meeting was focused on the new Parent page field and the upcoming breadcrumbs-based navigation system.

Here’s a summary of the questions and answers shared during the session:

Should we choose Topic pages or Org pages as parents?

While either could be appropriate based on your content, we’d suggest leaning toward Topic pages when you can find one that is appropriate. Topic pages, undergoing a redesign in early 2022 to make them more streamlined, will give readers a wider choice of related resources not restricted to those from a single organization.

Your content will always have an “Offered by” link back to your Organization or Organizations.

Will the “Offered By” link be going away?

No, but the “Part Of” relationship indicator goes away when the breadcrumbs based on Parent page fields go live.

How should I use the “Pages with questionable parents” report?

Search for your content using filters in the “Parents with questionable parents” report under the “Reports” tab in the main CMS navigation menu. Then review the Parent page field on those pages to decide whether you think the parent pre-chosen was appropriate. If not, replace it, and remove the “multiple-possible-parents” label in the Label(s) field.

You can also view the "Hierarchy" tab on parent pages to get a visual view of how your content fits together. Use drag-and-drop to move child pages where they fit best.

If your content has the “multiple-possible-parents” label on it, are you able to see what all the parent pages considered were?

Not directly, but you can check Pages Linking Here to get a sense of which pages are linking to your child pages. From there, you can decide which of these pages would make the best parent.

Should we take a top-down or bottom-up approach to reviewing and assigning parents?

It will be a mix. You might start bottom-up for your most-viewed child pages, but we recommend top-down for a bigger picture view. Some organizations first focus on certain child page content types, like Information Details, and assign them appropriate parents. Then they work their way up, such as to Service pages.

Why do some pages not have parents on the “Pages with no published parent” report?

Not all Topic or Org pages need parents, so may show up in this report. Otherwise, it could have to do with there being an unpublished draft of a page, which would not require a parent until published.

What if I see a Topic page that has an inappropriate parent page?

Send a ServiceNow request to the Mass.gov team listing any such pages and a suggested more appropriate parent.

Will featured Topics look the same on Org pages after the Topic page format changes in early 2022?

They probably will look different. But we envision agencies will likely want to pick between showing featured Topics and the list of links under the “What Would you Like to Do?” section on their Organization pages. Showing both might make pages too long and busy.

Is there a way to preview breadcrumbs on the site beyond what you can see within the CMS on individual pages?

We may be able to share a staging view of this soon.

Can a Service Details page be a parent? A parent for a Service page?

Yes. We’ll be adding a list of possible parent-child relationships in our Parent page article.

Is it OK for “Short titles” to duplicate those from other organizations?

Yes, the Short title field will be used exclusively for displaying breadcrumbs in what may be a more streamlined manner than would be possible if using the full page Title. Don’t go too short, or too heavy on acronyms, as this could make the breadcrumb unclear.

Is the use of breadcrumbs likely to boost traffic to Topic pages?

Possibly, but Topic and other parent pages are already visible in the “Part of” relationship indicators that will be going away when breadcrumbs go live. So having Topic pages linked via breadcrumbs instead may not have a huge impact on traffic to them.